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By: Jack EncarnacaoAug 4, 2012

We may look back at July 2012 as the month Anderson
Silva’s ability to draw money at the box office finally caught
up to his ability to win fights in the Octagon.

The middleweight king’s UFC
148 rematch against state-of-the-art antagonist Chael Sonnen
broke the all-time gate record for a mixed martial arts event in
the United States, brought
Ultimate Fighting Championship pay-per-view buys to the one
million mark for the first time in nearly two years and accelerated
his exploding profile in his Brazilian homeland.

After his second-round technical knockout victory, Silva, 37,
embraced his lippy nemesis, the teeth and limbs of whom he
threatened to break in the run-up to the fight. The post-fight
warmth could be read as an acknowledgement from Silva of the role
Sonnen and his gift of gab played in building more anticipation for
this fight than any during his record six-year title reign.

For all his dominance, Silva has never moved pay-per-view orders
like contemporaries Chuck
Liddell, Brock
Lesnar and Georges St.
Pierre. Silva’s title defenses have typically hovered in the
300,000-buy range, including 325,000 for his most recent outing
against Yushin Okami
at UFC 134.

The Independence Day Weekend event did about one million buys on
pay-per-view, according to The Wrestling Observer, the highest
since UFC 121 was headlined by Brock
Lesnar-Cain
Velasquez in October 2010. UFC 148 joined elite company as one
of only seven events in company history to reportedly reach one
million buys.

The event at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas was also a
resounding success in terms of ticket sales. The $6,901,655 gate
smashed the U.S. record of $5,397,300 for UFC 66 in 2006. Like
Silva-Sonnen 2, UFC 66 was headlined by a grudge rematch between
Liddell and Tito Ortiz.
Ortiz retired in the co-main event at UFC 148 and shared the
marquee with Silva and Sonnen. It was the second highest gate in
UFC history, trailing the company’s Toronto debut, which raked in
$12 million. There were 13,606 tickets sold for UFC 148; 1,498 more
spectators were comped. Only 64 tickets for the event went unsold,
according to the Nevada Athletic Commission.

For all of the box office spark the Silva-Sonnen dynamic provided,
UFC 148 was also boosted by an unprecedented marketing push that
had Las Vegas buzzing to an unprecedented degree for a UFC event
and caught the eye of mainstream sports news outlets.

The UFC partnered with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors
Authority in building “International Fight Week” around the show.
Unlike typical UFC events in Las Vegas that are only promoted by
the host casino, the quasi-public authority opened the door to
blanket promotion across all Sin City properties, which hosted
everything from the UFC Fan Expo to UFC-themed beach parties and
pub crawls. The Wrestling Observer reported a record turnout of
8,000 fans for the Friday weigh-ins, and UFC.com saw record traffic
all week, including the most views by far for a UFC press
conference stream.

The partnership with Las Vegas will continue, cementing
Independence Day Weekend as the biggest on the UFC calendar. The
company will sell International Fight Week as a destination event
in all of the markets it hits around the world. In an interview
with The Las Vegas Review-Journal, the UFC’s chief marketing
officer projected the week would bring 50,000-60,000 fans to Las
Vegas, five to 10 percent from other countries, with strong
contingents from Brazil, Canada and the United Kingdom.

The week was so significant the UFC took a preemptive step to deal
with counterfeit merchandise sales. The week before UFC 148, the
promotion filed a lawsuit in federal court in Nevada against
several unnamed parties it expected would try to sell counterfeit
T-shirts and other items outside International Fight Week
venues.

As big as UFC 148 was in America, the event may have had even more
impact in Brazil. Silva- Sonnen 2 aired on a 30-minute delay on
Rede Globo, the country’s leading television network. The fight
reportedly did a 19 share rating on Globo, which translates to
about 22 million viewers, an astronomical number of eyeballs the
UFC has never come close to matching on American television. The
entire UFC 148 card aired live in Brazil on the subscription
channel Combate, which sold the event for the same rate as a
monthly subscription. Combate gained 200,000 new subscribers for
the show, according to Sherdog.com Brazilian correspondent Marcelo
Alonso. The channel had 240,000 subscribers prior to the fight.

Silva-Sonnen 2 was originally targeted for a Brazilian soccer
stadium that would have challenged the UFC attendance record.
However, a convention in Rio de Janeiro on the targeted date
presented too many logistical complications. A delicate negotiation
ensued between Silva and UFC President Dana White before a
previously scheduled press conference in Brazil. Brazilian sports
news outlet “O Globo” reported Silva insisted on fighting in Brazil
during the 75-minute meeting but agreed to the move after White
stressed the amount of promotion in Las Vegas for the event and the
pay-per-view sales it would generate.

In all likelihood, UFC 148 was the most lucrative night of Silva’s
career, as he is one of the select UFC fighters who receive a cut
of each pay-per-view purchase for his fights. Soares would not
confirm how much Silva gets per buy, but such arrangements are
typically on an escalating scale, with the highest per-buy rate
coming for each order over 300,000. A clause in Randy
Couture’s UFC contract, disclosed in 2007 as part of a lawsuit,
maxed out at $3 per buy.

The blockbuster numbers put Silva’s management and the UFC in a
tough position, trying to arrange lucrative fights in a division
where most of the challengers are unproven as pay-per-view
attractions. Soares said challengers like Chris
Weidman and Tim Boetsch,
both of whom notched wins in July that could justify title shots,
do not make business sense.

“I don’t want to revolve it around money all the time, but come on,
man, that’s what it is,” Soares said. “We want big fights.
Unfortunately, fighting a guy like Chris
Weidman at this point in his career, fighting a guy like
Tim
Boetsch at this point in his career ... it’s going to do more
for Tim
Boetsch or Chris
Weidman at this point in their career; but that’s just how I
feel. If the UFC says, ‘Hey, I don’t give a s---, you’re fighting
him,’ he’s going to fight him. For Anderson, I’d like to see him do
the biggest fights possible, and, right now, be it at a catchweight
or whatever, I still think the biggest fight possible at this point
is Georges St.
Pierre.”

In the interim, it appears Silva’s profile is going to grow
appreciably. He created buzz when he Tweeted pictures of himself at
Nike headquarters in Oregon after UFC 148, wearing a Nike shirt
that read “SILVA KNOWS.” Soares confirmed to Sherdog.com that Silva
has reached an endorsement deal with Nike, making him the first UFC
fighter to do so. Silva wore the Nike Swoosh on his walkout gear at
UFC 148.

“It was a dream come true to see him have a Nike deal; it’s been a
work in progress for the past six to eight months, maybe over a
year,” Soares said. “There’s no other fighter in the world that
should be the first to have a deal with Nike more than Anderson.
He’s the Michael Jordan of the sport and he deserves that.”